Head Puzzle

[osirissail]

Originally Posted by peghall

You've overlooked one of the "hotbeds" of "no discharge," the Florida Keys.
. . . There's actually enough enforcement that just about every boat has a holding tank now...but more of 'em are being illegally dumped than pumped. However, waste still has to be managed while it is in the tank...and so far, no one has been bitten on the arse by anything in the bowl.

The Federal law 33 CFR Part 159 requires all boat made since 1997 or before (I think the original version of the law goes back another decade) to have "holding tanks."
- - I have sailed and chartered in the Keys going way back and never had a single thought or concern about direct discharge. Even the charter outfits never were concerned about holding tanks and pump-outs - which simply did not exist.
- - As you mentioned and I also posted, few if any boat owners used the tanks properly and simply keep black water discharge routed directly overboard.
- - I have seen too many used boats where the required holding tank was removed by the owner who never used it and wanted the space for something else or some other reason.
- - So over the last decade and especially in recent years the new owners of these boats have had to "re-install" holding tanks or remain, forever, outside the USA.
- - Putting the tanks back into the boats is especially difficult especially for returning boats from outside the USA as they are not easily available outside the USA since nobody uses them.
- - 15 years ago or so I sailed to the Channel Island off Los Angeles and encountered the first NDZ where the local rangers/LEO's placed dye tablets in the MSD. Everywhere else along the coasts of the USA nobody cared until the big first NDZ flap in New England followed. And for a last decade or so, the NDZ craze had boomed amongst local and State governments. Still few if any places "enforced" the rules since Pump-out facilities did not exist or if they existed they were inoperable.
- - Now in the last few years, the Potty Police hassles has grown astronomically more than ever before. And although as you mentioned, "no one has been bitten on the arse by anything in the bowl" - more and more folks are getting bitten in the wallet by these Potty Police even though pump-outs still don't exist or are few and far between.
- - So now a "new" situation exists where large numbers of boaters are using their holding tanks where previously virtually nobody did.

[peghall]

The Federal law 33 CFR Part 159 requires all boat made since 1997 or before (I think the original version of the law goes back another decade) to have "holding tanks."

Not quite... It's actually 40 CFR 140.3 that requires all vessels to hold or TREAT "sewage" ("human body wastes and the wastes from toilets and other devices intended to receive or retain body waste"), effective Jan 1, 1980. 33 CFR 159 spells out requirements for builders and sanitation equipment mfrs. Very little of it applies to owners...only 159.7 which lists all the acceptable means of "securing" a holding tank inside the "3 mile limit" or a Type I or II MSD (USCG certified treatment devices) while in an NDZ and 159.83m which sayeth, "Each sewage retention device must have a means of indicating when the device is more than3/4full by volume"...iow, a tank level indicator is required unless the tank is made of a material and also in a location that's readily accessible to allow the level to be determined by visual inspection.

No substantive changes or updates have been made to either 40 CFR or 33 CFR since they were written in the late 1970s. The "Clean Vessel Act of 1992" which provides federal grants to marinas to cover up to 75% of the cost of installing pumpout equipment is the only thing that's been written since.

[osirissail]

Yes, I did think that it was quite before 1997 but couldn't find it on a Google search. However, the "indicating" system is probably not known by many. Good information.
- - I'm lucky in that when I installed holding tanks in my 1974 boat they were "translucent" and positioned so I could see the liquid level in the tanks. I also routed the output hoses from the MSD's directly into the holding tanks and then Y-valved the output of the holding tanks to either a deck pump-out fitting or an overboard through-hull/seacock.